Muddling By – Seventh Draft Finished

Grammarly approves. Of course, I’d be surprised if it didn’t. The seventh draft of Muddling By has passed through Grammarly, my impersonal, unemotional, always available, sometimes confused editor. Next step, book formatting and building as I declare the text done, not perfect, but good enough – unless I want to start over and rewrite the whole thing. Ah, the arts: optimism and pessimism playing with each other every moment

Recently, I wrote a post about Being A B Writer. I guess I was wrong. If a 90 is squeaking by with an A, then I guess somehow I upgraded my writing. Or, Grammarly changed their scoring algorithm.

In any and either case, I’m done with the text. Ah.

I’ve joked with folks about writers being able to say a book is done several different times. First drafts should be celebrated. Maybe each subsequent draft. Maybe the edit. Maybe the book build. Definitely the submittal, the publication, the delivery of the fist copy, the first sale, and the acceptance into the Library of Congress. Why celebrate only once?

I’m tired.

Until today, I didn’t realize how much I’ve been thinking about and working on the book. It is time for a two-week road trip. If I stayed in some hotel, it would 1) cost more, and 2) probably see me sitting with my laptop in my lap. Dude. Go look at the world. And try to keep from writing a book about the trip, but take notes, just in case.

My apologies to my friends who are editors. I suspect most of you could do a better job than Grammarly, but by picking one I’d be not picking the rest. An algorithm can accept all of those criticisms without being slighted or offended. By picking Grammarly, my most common typos and missed words can be spotted. There’s always more to do, hence my comment about rewriting the book, but I have other books to write and probably fewer years left to work on them. Gotta move on.

Ideally, books are written at the writer’s pace without external constraints. Authors who consider readers know readers consider beach holidays and shopping seasons. Me, for this book, I’m considering the low but not zero possibility that ‘America’s Wealth Classes’ might have an end date, or at least an interesting episode soon. I wrote this to address that. I wrote this book to add to and aid in the discussions about wealth classes in America, specifically, in the United States. And the United States aren’t seeming very united lately.

Each of my books has had a temporal incentive. My books do not require great preliminary study, but there is a timeliness to books about real world experiences. Some author writing about an imminent apocalypse should get the book published before the fall. Hence, I’m getting this book about personal finance done now.

Or, almost now. The words are done. I’m skipping the internal graphics. It is time to pick a size, margins, headers, footers, page numbers (my bane), intro and outro text, marketing, and such. And then there’s the cover with its art, the ever-important title, the price, and generally whatever gets printed on the outside, or in the description of the ebook.

A month for the page formatting. A month for the cover. A hope that it doesn’t take that long. And what seems like a long time now, would put the publication date into the end of November. Hmm. Maybe I should skip the trip or make sure it rejuvenates me sufficiently.

Enough, and not enough, but there will be other posts. But for now, it is time for Grammarly to chew on this post while I take a nap before posting.
Thanks for being there. Good luck with your project.